Anti-Semitic sentiments are finding a place among American conservative Christians, often through far-right social media sites, such as the Manosphere, Red Pill, and 4chan, as well as Christian podcasts and websites, writes Will Spencer in his blog Christ Over All (June 2). Spencer focuses on Stone Choir, a weekly podcast hosted by Corey Mahler and Ryan Dumperth, both of whom were excommunicated from the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod for their anti-Semitic views. The podcast regularly trades in racialist and anti-Semitic tropes. Spencer came under attack from Stone Choir and its supporters after he criticized its anti-Semitic content and apologized for appearing on the podcast without knowing its ideology. His apology post amassed 250,000 views, many of them hostile to such criticism. He writes that anti-Semitism and the popularity of Stone Choir and its neo-Nazi narrative have grown especially since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in 2024. Influencers such as Candace Owens, Andrew Tate, and Nick Fuentes have hinted at these beliefs on X. “Worst of all, Reformed pastors have released videos talking about ‘Talmudic Judaism,’ ‘heritage Americans,’ and ‘low-IQ minorities,’ all of which are dog-whistles playing Stone Choir’s Neo Nazi tune to young men who can hear it,” Spencer writes.
In the Free Press (June 2), conservative Christian writer Rod Dreher sees a similar anti-Semitic influence in social media that are reaching Christians, especially young men. “When popular online figures offering crackpot takes like Actually, Churchill was the real villain of World War II find their way onto mainstream podcasts like Joe Rogan’s and Tucker Carlson’s, you know something massive is happening,” he writes. Dreher tells of a middle-aged professor at a Christian university in the South with a mostly conservative student body who has been “poleaxed by the number of normie white male Christians in his classes who are anti-Semites.” “This was not part of the conservative evangelical world I grew up in,” the professor said. “Support for Israel was a cultural marker for us. I’m not saying that you have to be on the side of this or that Israeli government policy, but good Lord, antisemitism?” Dreher writes that a “woke right” has emerged that is not often criticized or exposed by fellow conservatives. Even if the left-wing version of identity politics and “wokeness has lost some of its steam in the post-Biden era, the conditions that brought wokeness about still remain—and right-wing people (especially the young) are just as susceptible to the siren song of ideological certainty, and to the temptation of crushing all who stand in their way.”
(Christ Over All, https://christoverall.com/article/longform/the-dangerous-secret-your-young-men-are-keeping-neo-nazi-thought-has-entered-the-church/)
